To this point the book has been largely an examination of the condition of the American evangelical church and the reasons for its decline which has resulted in a diagnosis from which we derive the book’s title—Evangelical Winter. The final two chapters are prescriptive in nature. This chapter deals with the church and its position within and relationship to a hostile culture. The final chapter presents prescriptive remedies for evangelicalism’s departure from its roots described in the subtitle of this book—Restoring New Testament Christianity.
As mentioned several times, the central theme of this book is that over the course of its history, the church has suffered attack from within (theological compromise) and without (cultural compromise), but the principal thrust of both attacks can be described as nothing less than the diminution and final abandonment of biblical truth. This has occurred because the church consistently failed to recognize and resist the invasion of the spirit of the world. In America, many modern evangelical churches since the 1960s have been especially susceptible to the humanistic spirit of the world. This chapter deals with the role of the church in culture and includes an adaptation of a series of articles titled “This was done by ordinary people” first written and published by the author in CultureWarrior.net.[1]
In the aftermath of the great schism between the liberal and fundamentalist churches of the first three decades of the twentieth century, the culture was effectively abandoned by the fundamentalist churches that upheld the evangelical tradition (see Chapters 13 and 14). Following the end of World War II in 1945, this evangelical retreat from culture began to change as many younger Christian leaders, while retaining their fundamentalist-evangelical beliefs, began to engage the culture (see Chapter 15). But in the 1960s many evangelical churches began looking at different ways to engage and evangelize the culture as shown in several preceding chapters that describe the Church Growth movement. But these ways have had the same effect on the modern evangelical church as it had on the liberal church almost one hundred years ago—it has bowed to the demands of the humanistic spirit of the world.
Ravi Zacharias identified three of the demands of modern culture to which many in the evangelical community have surrendered: secularization, pluralization, and privatization. In a secularized culture, religion, its fundamental beliefs, the source of those beliefs, and the institutions that promote those beliefs and ideas are no longer viewed as socially significant in directing that culture.[2] In a pluralistic society that has been secularized there exist a number of worldviews contending for allegiance of its citizens. But no single worldview is allowed to dominate other than the anti-religious secular-humanistic worldview (its central cultural vision) which regards all sectarian worldviews as having equal worth or value but which have no voice in a secular society.[3] “Privatization may be defined as the socially required and legally enforced separation of our private lives and our public personas; in effect, privatization mandates that issues of ultimate meaning be relegated to our private spheres.”[4] Essentially, secularization states that the Christian church has no significant role in directing culture and defining its moral imperatives. Pluralization has demeaned the value of Christian truth and its message by equating it with all other competing worldviews and their false versions of truth. And finally, privatization socially and legally purges Christianity’s voice from the public square.
The desired course for any society and the larger civilization cannot be effectively charted without fixed reference points that are all oriented to objective truth. Caught up in the swirl and noise of the moment, the relativistic cultural ideas and trends of a humanistic society and their leaders bent on progress without a supernatural God have forsaken those fixed reference points. The consequences and outworking of those ideas and trends are often unrecognizable to a humanistic culture’s leaders until it is too late to adjust the rudder of culture as it steams forward, oblivious to the looming shoals of anguish, pain, despair, destruction, and death that lay ahead.
Where should society look to find those invaluable reference points? The words of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge give us a clue. “If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us! But passion and party blind our eyes, and the light which experience gives is a lantern on the stern which shines only on the waves behind us.”[5] Coleridge’s point is that we must look to history for guidance, but our backward look requires more than a cursory, fragmented glance. History must be studied and pondered to catch the whole sweep of truths it can teach.
Church and state – Lessons from history
As important as the backward glance at history is for illuminating some of the most important lessons that allows us the ability to avoid the repetition of past mistakes, Ravi Zacharias reminds the church that there is something more to be learned than a mere cause and effect reading of history. He states, “Behind this theater of reality is a God who is not only involved in the macrocosmic move of people, powers, and ideas but is intensely involved in each and every individual life.”[6]
The American culture is adrift and the pace towards destruction is accelerating. What is the evangelical church doing about it? Like their fundamentalists forebears, some in the evangelical church have abandoned or ignored the culture. Other evangelicals, mimicking the liberal victors in the liberal-fundamentalist schism of the first three decades of the twentieth century, have followed the liberal church’s path by embracing the culture through accommodating the spirit of the world. It is here that we must examine the recent history of the church and learn from its mistakes in the light of God’s truth for the church and its role in culture.
Lessons from the twentieth century German church
The end-product of the Holocaust lay in the gas chambers and ashes of the crematoria within the German death camps spread across Europe in 1945. But the beginning of the Holocaust was much more subtle and seemingly innocuous except to the Jew and others on the wrong side of the German cultural and political wars of the 1930s.
At the beginning of 1933, the German church stood at a crossroads. The great majority of German Lutheran churches chose the path of Hitler and the Nazis instead of the teachings of Jesus Christ.[7] All of German life was to be synchronized under Hitler’s leadership, and “…the church would lead the way.” The majority of churches called themselves “German Christians” and advocated a strong unified church seamlessly wedded to the state that would restore Germany to her former glory. The union of the state church with the Nazi regime required churches to conform to Nazi racial laws and ultimately swear allegiance to Hitler as the supreme leader of the church and by doing so “…blithely tossed two millennia of Christian orthodoxy overboard.”[8]
There was a minority of Christians and churches in Germany that opposed Hitler and the German Christians. The resistance centered within the new “Confessing Church” led by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Niemöller, and a few others. When Hitler heard of a potential church split because of objections to his policies, he summoned several dissenting church leaders including Niemöller to the Reich Chancellery. He lectured the assembled churchmen and said all he wanted was peace between Church and state and blamed them for obstructing his plans. Hitler warned them “…to confine yourself to the Church. I’ll take care of the German people.” Niemöller responded that the Church also had a responsibility toward the German people that was entrusted to them by God and that neither Hitler nor anyone else in the world had power to remove that responsibility. Hitler turned away without comment, but that same evening the Gestapo ransacked Niemöller’s rectory while searching for incriminating material. Within days a homemade bomb exploded in the hall of the rectory.[9]
As Nazi pressure was ratcheted up against the dissenting churchmen, Bonhoeffer and Niemöller were criticized by their fellow churchmen for opposing Hitler and his policies. Eventually over two thousand would choose the route of appeasement and safety and abandoned support of Bonhoeffer and Niemöller’s efforts in resisting the Nazis. “They believed that appeasement was the best strategy; they thought that if they remained silent they could live with Hitler’s intrusion into church affairs and his political policies.”[10]
However, not all Confessing Church pastors and lay leaders bowed to Hitler’s demands, but they would pay a price for their courage. In 1937, a remnant of more than eight hundred were arrested and imprisoned including Niemöller who spent the next eight years in prison, seven of which were in Dachau, one the Nazis’ most infamous concentration camps.[11]
We have identified three groups of churches in Nazi Germany of the 1930s: the apostate German Christian church, the Confessing church which became the silent church of appeasement, and a faithful remnant that became the suffering church.
In the twenty-first century, the enemy of the American church is still the one that Bonhoeffer identified as the “…the most severe enemy” that Christianity ever had—humanism.”[12] We are seeing the same patterns and methods used by Hitler to marginalize and make powerless much of the American Christian church through its seduction by the humanistic spirit of the age. The god of Hitler has been replaced by the god of humanism and its lesser god of equality in all of its destructive humanistic definition and interpretation.
In America there is an apostate church that has abandoned any pretense of adherence to the gospel message. Biblical truths are twisted, mocked, or dismissed altogether. Others champion a social gospel or preach a gospel of health, wealth, happiness, harmony, and cheap grace in place of the cross and death to self.
Apart from the apostate church, there is also a faithful but mostly silent church in America that is content to preach the gospel and ignore the culture. Erwin Lutzer wrote, “Whether in Nazi Germany or America, believers cannot choose to remain silent under the guise of preaching the Gospel…we must live out the implications of the cross in every area of our lives. We must be prepared to submit to the Lordship of Christ in all ‘spheres’.”[13] Yet, as we live out the implications of the cross in every area of our lives, we must understand that the culture wars in which we soldier for Christ are not about maintaining the American dream however one may define it. Rather, the culture wars are about restoring the biblical understanding of truth in all spheres of our national life. To do so one must speak the truth in the face of lies, stand on biblical principles when others compromise, and take right actions in spite of consequences. A hostile culture, an adversarial government, and a culpable legal system will extract a price from those that dare to oppose them. What is accomplished by such opposition when it seemingly brings only hardship, suffering, and defeat? “Suffering communicates the gospel in a new language; it authenticates the syllables that flow from our lips…It is not how loud we can shout but how well we can suffer that will convince the world of the integrity of our message.”[14]
In recent years the forces of humanism have gained sustained power and critical mass in all spheres of American life and have become openly hostile and threatening to the true church of Jesus Christ. However, there is a bold remnant of the faithful church that is listening to the voices of modern Bonhoeffers and Niemöllers who are speaking out in all spheres of American life against the evils that have spread over America and much of the church. Such boldness follows the path of costly grace, and very soon that remnant may be able to claim the cloak of the suffering church.
Most in the American church cannot comprehend the meaning of the suffering church. It is something that happens “over there,” something that is foreign to their thinking. They believe the American church somehow has been exempt from the consequences of costly grace. To suggest otherwise is almost heresy. But the Apostle Paul would disagree.
…it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are the children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may be glorified with him. [Romans 8:16-17. RSV] [emphasis added]
On April 9, 1945, Dietrich Bonhoeffer answered Christ’s final call. After two years in prison, he was hanged on the direct order of Adolph Hitler who ended his own life three weeks later in an underground bunker in Berlin.
The role of government and the role of the church as it relates to government
Dietrich Bonhoeffer went to his death on a Nazi gallows in 1945 with a very definite understanding of the role of the church in society, and his death was the eventual outcome of his living that understanding. God ordained the establishment of government for the preservation of order and the establishment of laws that define that order. The church has no right to interfere with the actions of the state in purely political matters. That said, Bonhoeffer also firmly believed the church plays a vital role in helping the state be the state by continually asking if the state’s actions can be justified as a legitimate fulfillment of its role. In other words, do the actions of the state lead to law and order and not to lawlessness and disorder? Where the state fails, it is the role of the church to draw the state’s attention to its failures. Likewise, if the state creates an atmosphere of “excessive law and order,” the church must also remind the state of its proper role. Excessive law and order becomes evident when the state’s power develops “…to such an extent that it deprives Christian preaching and Christian faith…of their rights.”[15]
Actions of the church with regard to government
Bonhoeffer listed three actions the church should take regarding the state. The first has been described—the church must question the state with regard to its actions and whether its actions can be justified as a legitimate concern of the state. Second, the church must “…aid victims of state action in its ordering of society…even if they (the victims) do not belong to the Christian community.” Bonhoeffer did not stop there but said a third step may be necessary. The church must “…not just bandage the victims under the wheel…but a stick must be jammed into the spokes of the wheel to stop the vehicle. It is sometimes not enough to help those crushed by the evil actions of a state; at some point the church must directly take action against the state to stop it from perpetrating evil.” But Bonhoeffer’s stick in the spokes of the wheel of state is justified only if the church’s very existence is threatened by the state and the state is no longer a state as designed by God.[16]
There are many disturbing parallels between the German church of the 1930s and the American church of the twenty-first century. Christianity and its values are under full-scale attack in America. The church must decide what it will or will not do in response to that attack. Some will choose to do nothing and as justification point to Paul’s letter to the Romans with regard to a Christian’s conduct in relation to the state.
Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore he who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of him who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain; he is the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be subject, not only to avoid God’s wrath but also for the sake of conscience. [Romans 13:1-5. RSV]
But to do nothing is a blatant misinterpretation of Paul’s message. Paul is not saying that we should be obedient to government regardless of what it does. It is nonsensical to claim that all rulers are legitimate authorities who must be mindlessly obeyed because of a misunderstanding of the meaning of Romans 13:1-5.
So how do we resolve the dilemma of whether we are to obey a specific ruler (government) or not? The issue revolves around whether or not a government is one that receives its authority from God. Christians must be subject to governing authorities if the authority is instituted by God, but Christians are not required to submit to those rulers whose authority is not instituted by God and therefore is illegitimate. The distinction becomes apparent from Paul’s words when he says that rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad conduct. But we know that many rulers in this world are a terror to good conduct and therefore do not fall within Paul’s description of a government that receives its authority from God.
The church and bad government
Even where there is a bad government, Christians must be subject to governing authorities to a point. Christians are required to be subject to government laws and regulations even when they disagree with them. However, when those laws and regulations require Christians to compromise or disobey biblical commands with regard to one’s personal life or the lives over which they have been given charge, the Christian must be obedient to God’s word and not government authority. Two current examples come to mind which give meaning to this distinction. The Christian owners of Hobby Lobby have refused to provide health insurance to their employees under the Affordable Care Act because of the requirement for the inclusion of abortion services. A Colorado baker who is a Christian refused to make a cake for a homosexual couple’s wedding. Both are laws which conflict with what it means to be a Christian who is obedient to the word of God. Christians must still be subject to the governing authorities except when their obedience conflicts with the higher laws of God.
The church and illegitimate government
There is a step beyond bad government when a government’s authority becomes illegitimate because it no longer fulfills its role in providing order and has become lawless and disorderly. Therefore, Christians must be careful to distinguish between bad government and illegitimate authorities not ordained by God. We must also realize that bad governments, through a succession of actions upon which evil is piled upon evil, will at some point forfeit their legitimacy as God withdraws His authority. At that point the ignored warnings and admonishments of the church to a state rushing head-long into lawlessness and disorder must be exchanged for sticks to be thrust into the spokes of the wheel of that illegitimate government. But as previously cautioned, the casting of sticks into the spokes of the wheel of state is justified only if the church’s very existence is threatened and the state is no longer a state upon which God’s authority rests.
______
The very existence of the American church is being threatened by excessive laws and the heavy hand of the government as it attempts to drive Christianity from the cultural and institutional landscape of America. The church and Christians must continue to admonish the state as to its over-reach and a possible loss of legitimacy. As the American government deprives its citizenry of their rights regarding Christian preaching and Christian faith, society will continue to slide into a cultural swamp devoid of any hint of morality. There may come a point at which God will lift His authority as the government fails to fulfill its proper role. At such a time the church must be ready with sticks to thrust into the spokes of the wheel of a lawless and chaotic government.
Larry G. Johnson
Sources:
[1] Sources used and identified in the adapted articles will be separately shown in the end-notes of this chapter. Should the reader wish to read these articles, they may be found follows:
Larry G. Johnson, “This was done by ordinary people,” Parts I through IV, CultureWarrior.net.
Part I: https://www.culturewarrior.net/2014/05/30/this-was-done-by-ordinary-people-part-i/ (May 30, 2014).
Part II: https://www.culturewarrior.net/2014/06/06/this-was-done-by-ordinary-people-part-ii/ (June, 6, 2014).
Part III: https://www.culturewarrior.net/2014/06/13/this-was-done-by-ordinary-people-part-iii/ (June 13, 2014).
Part IV: https://www.culturewarrior.net/2014/06/20/this-was-done-by-ordinary-people-part-iv/ (June 20, 2014).
[2] Ravi Zacharias, Deliver Us From Evil – Restoring the Soul in a Disintegrating Culture, (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 1997), p. 24.
[3] Ibid., p. 70.
[4] Ibid., p. 105.
5] Ibid., p. 124.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Erwin W. Lutzer, When a Nation Forgets God,” (Chicago, Illinois: Moody Publishers, 2010), p. 44.
[8] Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer, (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 2010), pp. 151-152, 176.
[9] Lutzer, pp. 19-20.
[10] Ibid., p. 21.
[11] Metaxas, pp. 293, 295.
[12] Ibid., p. 85.
[13] Ibid., p. 33.
[14] Ibid., pp. 120-121.
[15] Ibid., p. 153.
[16] Ibid., pp. 153-154.
